Forced Drug Testing

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Forced Drug Testing CJA/373 Forced Drug Testing Drug testing is being given to many people for different reasons such as obtaining employment. One may ask should drug testing be forced upon those entering the prison system. Is it fair for those obtaining employment be given a drug test but not to those that are criminals. Criminals are given drug tests to ensure bail is set at a level that can be obtained and so that the courts can recommend that, they receive help for their addictions. Looking at individuals having to do drug testing to obtain employment I do not see why a defendant should not have to do the same. Once in the criminal justice system defendants should have to do drug testing to make sure that they are clean or if they are on any type of drug that can endanger their life or the life of someone else. Performing drug test on those entering the criminal justice system can help those that need help for their habits obtain it during and after their incarceration. These studies found that measures of prior drug arrests or convictions frequently do relate to measures of pretrial misconduct (Goldkamp, Gottfredson, and Weiland, 1990). For example, Roth and Wice, Toborg and Kirby, and Toborg et al. all found that defendants who reported drug use to staff during their pretrial services interviews had higher rearrests and failure-to-appear rates than those who did not admit drug use (Goldkamp, Gottfredson, and Weiland, 1990). Similarly, Goldkamp et al. found that those with a criminal history of drug arrests were over twice as likely to fail to appear and to be rearrested during the pretrial period as those without such a history (Goldkamp, Gottfredson, and Weiland, 1990). Pretrial drug testing programs are ineffective because they are based on faulty assumptions. The assumptions are that doing predicting the defendant’s drug use will predict

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